ANDREA MICHAELSSON, BTOY. IN RESIDENCE at the Lluís Domènech i Montaner Secondary School

Identitats Project

Born in Barcelona and known chiefly by her street artist’s name BTOY, Andrea Michaelsson has been creating her stencils and painting in the street since 2001. Her murals, prints and canvases, which often show iconic women of pop culture, are in the streets and galleries of Barcelona, London and Paris, and many other cities in Europe, but also in South America and even Indonesia.

Trained as a photographer, a discipline that she always uses in her creative process, she began painting in the street and it was in this context where she learned from her fellow artists the secrets of the technique and the materials. Despite the large amount of work that she has done in the city streets, it is in the workshop where she does her research and where she creates her stencils and posters, and this is why she defines herself as a fine artist.

Interested in the street as a canvas, it gives her a predetermined context and textures in which to insert her images. The street says, “It’s not just painting, it also involves discovering a new place,” a reason to travel or walk around her city in search of the next surface.

The divas of Hollywood from the 1920s to the 1940s, the flappers as archetypes of liberated women, or geishas, are the motifs with which she decides to beautify the city, an excuse to take art outside the usual settings and place it within everybody’s reach.

TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE PROJECT

• Check out the blog of the 2015-2016 edition.
• Read the article at the The soul report.
• Watch the video of the process of creating the Identitats mural that was exhibited in the space next to the Oval Hall during the 2015-2016 academic year.
• Download the project report here.